Taking Tax Law Seriously: The Opinion of AG Mazák in EDF

The applicability of the private investor test (PIT) to tax measures has been a hotly debated issue especially since the GC’s 2009 ruling in EDF. In EDF, the GC had accepted that at least some types of tax advantages (there: tax breaks for a publicly owned undertaking) might be checked against a return on investment logic. That finding had, also in this journal, been greeted with enthusiasm by a considerable part of the State aid community and especially among practitioners. Some others, the more dogmatically bound, however remained sceptical. The reason for that scepticism is easily explained: Whereas the logic of the PIT is to compare public and private revenue motivations, dispositions ...